This will hurt me...

Please excuse me for a moment, I do believe that I need to vomit.

The sixth-ugliest building in Sandy Bay. Marieville Esplanade, Sandy Bay. September 2011.

So I have the flu. Bravery / foolhardiness compelled me to go to work yesterday (that and a meeting that I really didn't want to have to reconvene), and it was indeed a struggle.

To give you an idea, try this on for size: work up a nice little temperature and then chair a meeting in the late-afternoon (with teleconference), within which you also have to do a fair whack of the talking, as you arranged the thing. After valiantly making my way through the meeting (relatively) unscathed, the voice completely gives up the ghost in the cab on the way back to the office.

Thus I find myself 'resting' at home today. Kogel mogel all around!

Have you ever tried to pull to rowdy children through the delicate art of mime?

We scoot we skate we run we roll we flip we tumble we fumble we flop we cartwheel we skip we hop we jump we walk we talk we moan we groan we slink we slouch we grouch we go home.


Repeat to fade.

Who stole that brick and how did they get up there? Sandy Bay Road, Sandy Bay. September 2011.

I'm on struggle street today. Burdened down by what seems like a flu but with a meeting so important that it cannot be postponed, I suspect that today is going to be a very long day.™

I think that I'll need provisions, including:

1. Handkerchief (x 3).
   
   
2. Grapefruit.
   
   
3. Orange juice (with pulp).
   
   
4. Bottle of water.
   
   
5. Forlorn gazes out of window at sunshine.
   

And BOOM goes the dynamite!

No-one Came Here For A Lecture On Communism. The living room, Geilston Bay. September 2011.

There are at lest two pair of elite athlete's feet here. The other pair I suspect is good at knitting.

Let's go to the tape...

Cold?

You don't know cold!

Why, when I were a lad we'd be thankful for this kind of cold! I'd go to sleep every night thankfully that I had a blanket of snow keeping me warm at night!

Don't believe the spelling and punctuation. St George's Terrace, Battery Point. September 2011

Sunday Top Five already? Okay, now it's time for My Top Five Favourite Married To The Sea Cartoons This Sunday Morning!

Because I am young, and I am hip and so beautiful.
I am going to be a supermodel

I did not eat yesterday.
And I am not going to eat today.
And I am not going to eat tomorrow.

Because I am going to be a supermodel.

A bee's dream. Grace Street, Sandy Bay. September 2011.

There are things that you like and things that you do not like and there are things in between. I suspect that the in-between category is the biggest for me, but by golly "things that you don't like" is a biggun.

To Elsie, William Carlos Williams

The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky

or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and

valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between

devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure—

and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday

to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no

peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt

sheer rags—succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror

under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum—
which they cannot express—

Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood

will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder

that she'll be rescued by an
agent—
reared by the state and

sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs—

some doctor's family, some Elsie—
voluptuous water
expressing with broken

brain the truth about us—
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts

addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes

as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car

Now hold still Henry, we'll have that snake poison sucked out of your ear in no time...

Beetlemania #1. Bellerive Beach, August 2011.

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene is essentially a book about unhappiness. Like most of Greene's great novels, it pursues one man's journey through a series of moral dilemmas as the 'righteous' are tested. Oh how they are tested!

The character of Henry Scobie is probably Greene's greatest creations, a British colonial police officer stationed in some backwater West African town during World War Two. A Catholic, Scobie is indeed a righteous man who pays (in spades) for that trait.

Happiness, duty, pity and piety beguile Scobie as he journeys down a path that willingly secures his own eternal damnation (while we watch). Indeed, any tale whereby damnation is assured through and excess of compassion is bound to be an interesting one. To add to the uplifting tone, the book is also about failure: failure to love, failure to be loved, failure to communicate, failure to please, failure to protect; indeed, Scobie's ultimate sacrifice itself ends in failure.

This is a book that kicks you in the shin, offers a hand, then punches you in the face. It then offers you another hand up, helps dust you off and then hits you with a cast iron frying pan. Then it helps you up again only to kick you in the stomach and drop a microwave on your head. The it tells you, "okay enough now" and slowly walks away, only to spin around and give you one last kick in the head.

Crikey it is a magnificent bit of work. Absolutely recommended.



Beetlemania #2. Bellerive Beach, August 2011.

No, he isn't tied to a stake and he is not about to be shot.

---Transmission ends---

All in all it's just another crack in the wall. Princes Street, Sandy Bay. August 2011.

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?
"Christ..."

2. How much cash do you have on you?
54 dollars and 80 cents.

3. What’s a word that rhymes with DOOR?
Rapport.

4. Favorite planet?
Venus.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?
No idea.

6. What is your favourite ring tone on your phone?
"Ring ring."

7. What shirt are you wearing?
A cream short-sleeve one with blue(-ish) pinstripes.

8. Do you label yourself?
Not consciously.

9. Name the brand of the shoes you’re currently wearing?
Dr. Martens boots.

10. Bright or Dark Room?
This morning: dark. Usually: bright.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?
I love them very, very much. Whomever they are.

12. What does your watch look like?
This.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night?
Sleeping.

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell mobile telephone say?
Oddly enough, it was a longish and complicated matter than involved a little detective work this morning.

15. Where is your nearest 7-11?
There are none in Tasmania. The Internet tells me that the nearest is located in Rosebud, Victoria, approximately 793 kilometres away.